The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [42]
The line of pikes recoiled, fatally ruptured by the breach through its center. Individual weapons prodded and stabbed the monster, but most of these it ignored. Those pikes that attracted the Elf-Eater's attention were pulled from their wielders' hands and snapped, with the Llewyrr warriors as likely as not to immediately follow their weapons to ruin.
"Flee! Run for your lives!" Panic-an uncommon characteristic among elven warriors-spread rapidly through the rank. Some of the Llewyrr threw down their pikes and raced for the causeway into the city, only to be blocked by the company of Thy-Tach spearmen, still standing firm. Others fled across the field while a small band, perhaps a third of the original company, retained their pikes and formed a bristling square. They moved away from the Elf-Eater toward the trees, and the monster seemed content to let them go.
The Thy-Tach spearmen, standing at the very end of the causeway at the lakeshore, cast their weapons as the Elf-Eater rose above them. Several of the missiles found targets in the gaping mouth, but this did little more than inflame the monster.
The terrifying creature swept tentacles low along the ground, sweeping a half-dozen Thy-Tach from their feet. In the next moment, the monstrous beast rolled over them, muffling their screams with its huge size. When it moved past, these elves had vanished.
Next Ityak-Ortheel turned its attentions to the lake itself, moving toward the white stone causeway that led to the gleaming gates of Chrysalis. As a result of Myra's orders, many Synnorian clerics stood along the wall above the silver-steel gates. Now these clerics called upon Corellon Larethian, Solonar Thelandira, and the other multitudinous gods of the elves, praying in their hour of need for powerful spells.
As the Elf-Eater started across the causeway, leaving crushing footprints in the white stone surface, the waters of the lake responded to the clerical spell-casting and began to rise. First they washed against the banks of the causeway, and then in several places wavelets crossed the road itself. Swiftly the footprints behind the monster filled with water, and in another few moments, the entire causeway vanished under several inches of the steadily rising lake.
Waves tossed and surged over the road, rising into an unnatural mound. The monster continued its advance as water surged upward, several feet higher than the causeway. The effect of the spell was local. The lake didn't flood beyond its banks onto the field or into the streets of the city, but it continued to grow, frothing like a rushing stream, climbing into a higher and higher barrier along the length of the stone roadway, forming a long ridge of turbulence.
Tentacles lashed like eels through the water before and around the Elf-Eater, groping to hold the beast on the raised platform of stone. Waves splashed against it like breakers crashing onto a rock-strewn shore.
Then the clerics raised a great shout, and the spell culminated in an immense wave, washing upward into a peak over the causeway. The dome of the monster's carapace showed like a wet rock in the surf, but all of its body had vanished below the churning water.
No cheer rocked the city wall yet. Even had the thing been slain and dismembered before these Llewyrr, it's doubtful that they would have celebrated. So profound was the shock of the Elf-Eater's intrusion, so obscene and horrifying was its apparent purpose, that even its defeat would merely leave the elves of Synnoria in a state of numbness.
And then even that frail hope vanished, for the rounded back of the Elf-Eater continued to press through the water. White turbulence swirled around it, trailing away behind as the thing continued to move forward. The violent watery onslaught slowed it only momentarily. As long as the monster could feel the causeway, the great legs and feet continued to carry the huge body forward.
The elven clerics tried mightily, with resounding cries for power and for the blessings of their